Win2k keeps hanging

[TruckStuff]

This is so frustrating. I have a P3-700 with 384MB of micron cas2 RAM. I typically have a lot of windows open for work at any given time (4 IE6's, Outlook 2000, ACDSee, Photoshop, Front Page 2k, and Excel 2k is not uncommon for me). Every once in a while after all of this has been open for some time, the system will just fart out on me. Web pages won't load (giving page not found errors), I won't be able to switch between windows, and it takes task manager 5 minutes to come up. Task manager says that everything is still responding and that I haven't even come close to touching my swap file yet (<250MB of memory used vs. 384 total physical). However, when I close a window for something that takes a lot of memory (like photoshop), the whole thing comes back right away. Again, there was never any indication that any window stopped responding or that I was out of memory. Does this sound like a resource problem or a software problem or what? Here are the specs:

P3-700 at stock w/ golden opb
384MB Micron CAS2
Asus CUSL2
2x IBM 75GXP 15GB in RAID0
GTS2
SB Live Value
NetGear 10/100 NIC
Several fans

My swap file is set to 384 for min and max. Running in the background, I usually have Norton 2001 (could this be the culprit??), DirectCD (the wizard thing), Yahoo Messenger (unfortunately, I need it for work), and a fax software that I need for work.

A friend tells me that I might try linux, but I know nothing about it and I don't really have the time to learn, as this is critical to my job. Any thoughts? Might an upgrade of memory solve the problem? TIA.

BTW: all software and drivers are as up-to-date as possible.

[DocSilly]

It shouldn't be a hardware problem, the CUSL2 is quite stable and so is the rest of your hardware. Just make sure the SB Live doesn't share an interupt with another card like the NIC or your AGP card. Check page 28 in your manual. PCI slot 2 and 6 look ideal for SBLive and NIC. Also dont's forget to disable unused onboard hardware (CNR, onboard VGA).

It also shouldn't be a general OS problem assuming you have the latest patches and SP2 installed.
I have an overclocked system and it is stable, I have Win2kSP2 running with 768MB and I often hit easily up to 300MB memory load just surfing and doing some other stuff with 50+ processes. I play games on top of that memory load

Anything in the Event Viewer? How is your CPU usage at those times? Any extensive HDD usage during that time?

Yer better keep making backups, the IBM 75GXP drives aren't the most reliable ones, so maybe give them a checkup with IBMs Drive Fitness Test -> http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

[TruckStuff]

IBM utilities checked out OK. I moved the NIC and sound card around so hopefully, that will resolve any issues there. Windows 2000 wants to put everything on IRQ9 because I have the ACPI stuff running, which I don't want to get rid of. The event viewer has several things that keep appearing over and over:

In the system log an error from source ftdisk appears every time I boot up:
Configuring the Page file for crash dump failed. Make sure there is a page file on the boot partition and that is large enough to contain all physical memory.

I have set my virtual memory to 384 min/max (the amount of RAM I have) so I don't know what this means.

In the application log an error from source PerfDisk appears every time I boot:
Unable to read the disk performance information from the system. Disk performance counters must be enabled for at least one physical disk or logical volume in order for these counters to appear. Disk performance counters can be enabled by using the Hardware Device Manager property pages. Status code returned is data DWORD 0.

I don't have any idea what this is or how to fix it. Thoughts?

[DocSilly]

Configuring the Page file for crash dump failed. Make sure there is a page file on the boot partition and that is large enough to contain all physical memory.

Tough to pinpoint this one, you need at least the same amount as your memory free on the HDD for the full memory dump, dunno what this has to do with the page file. You could just up the size to 500/500 ...

For the other error ... beats me, could you post the event id of the errors?

[TruckStuff]

The ID for the PerfDisk one is 2001; the ftdisk one is 49. Both are of type "error" and do not have a category.

[DocSilly]

Just do a quick run on google and you might find more info than me.

http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?app= ... entid=2001 for perfdisk and event id 2001

http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?app= ... eventid=49 for ftdisk and event id 49

Dunno if this'll help you but it'll point you in the right direction ... and there're always the newsgroups.

http://www.eventid.net/ is main page to search for event id's, worthy to bookmark in my eyes.

[TruckStuff]

Great site indeed. Thanks for the link!

[Jester]

I find that having a virus scanner running in the background creates problems in Win2k. Here at work we have McAfee running in the background and AIM dies about once an hour and the system hangs every once in a while. If I turn McAfee off everything works great.

[TruckStuff]

Well, that's what I've tried today without much luck. I disabled Norton's AutoProtect, and my system is starting to hangup now. I've found that when the system hangs, the CPU usage is at a constant 100% during the entire hang, but memory usage stays the same. The rest of the time the CPU usage is at or near zero. There is some light HDD activity, but nothing major. Besides, task manager says 264,252K of memory is being used and I have 384MB of physical memory so it shouldn't be hitting the swap file, should it?

It seems that when I exit Norton altogether everything starts moving again (pointing to my suspicion of Norton being the culprit). My next question was going to be if McAfee is any better, but it apparently isn't if others have similar problems. So now my question is can I schedule Norton to do virus scans every night if I don't have AutoProtect enabled or Norton loaded? Thanks guys.

[FlyingPenguin]

Norton can be a real resource hog, but McAfee isn't much better. I have NAV running on my server but I refuse to run ANY background virus scanner on my workstation.

On my workstation I have McAfee 4.05 installed ONLY as an on-demand scanner (the background scanner is not even installed, and all background apps for McAfee are disabled in the registry).

Everything I download goes into a download folder which I religiously scan for viruses. I've been doing it that was for years and never caught a virus.

Background scanners are great for people who aren't tech-savvy, but anyone who's a power user (and that's most of the people on this forum) don't need a background scanner as long as they use common sense.

I like McAfee 4.05 because unlike later versions and NAV, you can easily install only the on-demand scanner and eliminate all background apps.


I too am running Win2K and generally have several windows open at one time (Photoshop, ImageReady, several IE and Netscape, Outlook, GoLive, Etc). I keep my background apps to the absolute minimum and I find my system runs the smoothest.


if I were you I'd look REAL carefully at what's running in the background and start disabling a few things. Many of these little "FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE" background apps that most software installs for you are both uneccessary and often buggy (crap like Office's evil Startup & Findfast, and Winamp Agent, Real Player Start Center, etc).

All it takes is one buggy background app with a memory leak to make your life miserable.

Also check for Adware since it's notoriously buggy.

As for memory usage, I don't know how large and complex a Photoshop project you usually work on, but Photoshop (especially with ImageReady also running) is a MAJOR memory hog on my system. Most of my images are 800x600 (web pages) but I put EVERYTHING in a seperate layer (makes it easier to make changes later). I could easily have 20 - 40 layers in a web page design. More if it has complex console.

I use a taskbar clock app (VERY small footprint, and rock stable) which in addition to expanding the clock so it also gives the date, also reports the amount of physical RAM available.

On my 512Mb system I've often seen it go down below 50 Mb when working a big Photoshop image at which point I'll start closing other windows:


It's a freeware app called TClockEX: http://users.iafrica.com/d/da/dalen/tclockex.htm

Hope this helps...

[TruckStuff]

Do you always have PunkBuster running "at work", FP?

Here is what I have running at startup:
J2 Communicator -- neccesary for work
AtGuard -- I don't like my system to be flodded with cookies and ads, but if someone has an alternative suggestion, I'm all ears
IntelliPoint and IntelliType -- latest versions on both
Some other services and required MS stuff.

In the registry I have a few things I'm not sure what they are:
<b>name:</b> NvCplDaemon <b>type:</b> reg_sz <b>value:</b> rundll32.exeNcQTwk, NVCplDaemon initialize
<b>name:</b> NPS Event Checker <b>type:</b> reg_sz <b>value:</b> c:\progra~1\Navnt\npscheck.exe

Is there some kind of maximum number of windows that can be open at one time? Some times when I have a bunch open and try to open something else it will just beep ("default sound", that is) at me and not do anything.

[DocSilly]

Task Manager is able to show you which process (program) goes bananas and grabs all the power, write down the program and search your HDD for it in case you can't pinpoint it by its name right away.

I have no problems on Win2k running NAV wity autoprotect enabled all the time.

[FlyingPenguin]

Do you always have PunkBuster running "at work", FP?

YUP! I work out of my home - self employed.

Actually I leave PB running all the time since it's well behaved and it's a pain when you get into a game and forget to run it first.


Anyway, I like to use Startup Control Panel to find out what's running in the background and disable it. Easier than messing in the registry and more useful than Win98's MSCONFIG: http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

See if you can find anything else running.

NvCplDaemon = NVidia overclocking utility built into the drivers.

NPS Event Checker = seems to be related to NAV


Try disabling anything you can live without a few days, including AtGuard. I'd disable NAV and see if that helps - you can always install it later.

If you've got the whole Norton Suite installed DEFINATELY remove System Doctor, Norton Protected Recycling Bin and any of the background utils - they're MAJOR resource hogs and completely uneccesary.


You're probably going to find it's a misbehaved background app or possibly even a misbehaved driver. Maybe Adware 0 do you have Adaware? I don't like running it all the time, but if I suspect there's adware in there I'll do a scan with it.

You have Service Pack 2 installed I assume?

Do you notice the problem is more likely if IE is running? If you're running IE 5.x you should upgrade to 5.5 Service Pack 2. Use IE 6 at your own risk - especially if you're doing web design. I just run a second system with IE 6 for web page testing.

It's also possible you have some stupid IE plugin that's causing problems.



My system started acting like that 4 months ago and since it had been a LONG time since I'd done a clean install, I did one. I also made a Ghost image of the boot partition right after the clean install and installing ALL my necessary apps. If it ever acts up again and it's not worth screwing with, I'll restore from the Ghost image (all my data and apps are installed in seperate partitions).


Hope you can sort it out. Nothing more aggravating when you're trying to get work done.

Hope this helps.

[TruckStuff]

Well, I didn't really find anything new with that utility, but its a good one to have. I disabled both the overclocking thing (since I'm not o/cing) and the NPS deal. I figured it was realted to Norton, but I wasn't sure what it did. I ditched everything NAV (only NAV btw) related earlier today. I run Adaware pretty regularly, and all it found today was 1 cookie from double click.

I downloaded a few critical updates today, but other than that everything on the system is up to date. I am using IE6 right now, but I don't really have any plugins other than Flash and major stuff like that. Do you know where I could find an earlier version of it or if it would even let me install an earlier version? And I reformatted about three weeks ago so, I don't think that's a problem either.

Thanks for the advice. I guess tomorrow will tell if these changes have made any difference. I am done working for the evening now.

[FlyingPenguin]

I'm not entirely sure if you can uninstall IE 6 - there may be an uninstall option for it in Add/Remove programs.

That should leave you back with your original version. Then I'd suggest going to Windows Update and installing IE 5.5 SP2.